"First impressions of Poland: Dry. Stuffy. Depressing. This is probably mostly attributable to the four hours that Rebecca and I spent touching our neighbors' knees in a 2nd-class smoking car from Bydgoszcz to Warsaw. I just kept seeing these halfhearted houses and these thrown-together train platforms in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE that look more like rusted 1970s playground equipment than an actual place where people board trains--thank you, recent communism--and tired looking flowering brush, and I was like, is this it?"
"A textbook Eastern European woman (tacky purple jewelry, scrunchie, orange-red lipstick) not only mediated our questions to the train conductor, but got off at Warsaw Centralna--skipping her own stop--just to make sure we got on the right connecting train. It's instances like that that make me feel like the world's not so big after all...and yet, the hassle of today makes me extraordinarily aware that Americans aren't the center of the universe."
"I've tried to start this explanation several times and I feel like I just can't. It was the only remaining gas chamber, the other (and larger) two at Birkenau having been dynamited in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The air was thick with poison and thousands of ghosts. The mildewed ceiling dripped death. The silence reeked of last screams and lungs closing against one's will. I stumbled through, dazed. I had stood where they had stood, and yet, I was alive. Not by virtue of inner strength or perseverance, but just by the mere chance of chronology. I walked through the valley of death and emerged dizzy and utterly empty and completely unharmed. I find this staggeringly unfair."
"People talk about Auschwitz like a giant cosmic ink blob on the annals of history, and it most emphatically is not. Some god did not drop the ink. It wasn't a mistake. We wrote it, and we are responsible--not as Germans, not as Americans, not as old, not as young, as human beings--for not mopping it up in time.""I looked out at the fairly new houses built around Birkenau and Auschwitz, the residents of which have to look out at the reminder of that horror each day. How does a nation bounce back from being the main symbol of barbarism in the history of the modern world? I can't imagine."
"The main square is enormous and kind of quirky: illegal street vendors selling remote-control cars and foam dogs, hundreds of people eating lunch under yellow umbrellas, teenage hip-hoppers (is every city in the world required to have a mediocre dance team? I think so), turrets and arches and flags atop candy-colored buildings of indeterminate age. St. Mary's Church (pictured) is obviously ancient on the outside, but kind of unassuming as European churches go--all brick and tarnished brass, asymmetrical towers--but filled with kaleidoscopic color on the inside. Almost cartoonish and absolutely breathtaking."
"Wawel, the castle, is astounding but not quite elegant--a veritable hodgepodge of design elements (the retaining wall, for instance, was constructed in the 1920s), mostly brick and stucco, with the Wawel Cathedral (JPII's old hangout) ornamented with brass domes both aged and polished...soaring iron gates, ivy-covered towers, and a great view of sailboats on the Vistula. The gardens were in bloom and the sun was blazing."
"We were let into the Remuh Synagogue's incredibly old cemetery by two gruff guardsmen ("You pay!" "Cover your arms!"). It was silent. The whole Kazimierz quarter, in fact, was silent (it being the Sabbath and all).
"I think I've perfected the art of people-watching. Later in the day, we watched the sun set over the city from a shady bench in the Planty (park that surrounds the Old City) by the Florianska Gate, and I was completely absorbed by meditating on the fine line between dressing up and looking like a hooker in Eastern Europe, cooing at the audacious children and puppies that walked right up to me and stared before being summoned by their slightly embarrassed parents/owners, elderly couples all dressed up for a Sunday-evening stroll (men in sport coats and ties, women in skirt suits and heels, some shuffling painfully), the father and mother on Rollerblades, pushing a wheelchair-bound son and a baby in a stroller while a daughter, also on Rollerblades, tagged along, couples swapping hands in the back pockets of jeans...the real spirit of cities, I've found, seeks you out."
Life in Nijmegen right now can best be summed up by what I'm consuming: a raincoat, Top-Siders, a stack of UK Glamour, and a lot of Wilco. Yes, folks, the rain is back. Priscilla (my bike) is dying a long, slow, painful death, which makes me sad. Class is starting again today after almost two weeks of vacation, which is a welcome change. This break has mainly consisted of a lot of sleeping and dealing with the remnants of a nasty, nasty cold that developed right before Poland. I understand now why I get sick so rarely at school--my body simply doesn't have time to do it.
Freaky things: a mere 8 weeks until the land of red meat and freedom, technically being a senior...IN COLLEGE. How did I get so old?
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